Grim Expectations

by KW Jeter

  So we flew on into the night, the living and the dead, and toward whatever troublesome fate continued to be mine.

  Part IV

  The Fires of London

  ELEVEN

  An Uncomfortable Journey

  “Oy, Dower – get leg up. Bluidy useless, you are.”

  A hand grappled under my arm; already I had suffered the considerable discomfort of being dragged upward by the rope knotted about my chest, the rough edge of some elevated platform scraping hard through my garments. I did my best to comply with the instructions this unseen figure snarled at me, calculating that my safety would be increased by gaining some more substantial purchase than was allowed by dangling in the empty night air.

  I managed to lever the upper portion of my torso onto the flat surface toward which I had been raised; doing so enabled my rescuer – if so he was – to pull the rest of my body toward himself. For a moment, only my shins and boots still extended out into the open; with a kick and a lurch, I deposited myself at the other’s feet.

  “Should left you there,” he grumbled. “God might help hapless, but expect more coöperation myself.”

  From my face-downward position, I rolled over onto my back, to allow more breath into my gasping lungs, as well as to glimpse whoever it was so rudely addressing me.

  “Be here, though – all that matters.”

  I was not thoroughly surprised to see that singular individual, who had previously identified himself as Nick Spivvem, standing above me. He bent down with a bare knife blade in his hand – I was unable to shrink back – but he employed it only to slice through the rope bound about me; with it parted, I was able to gain enough air to at least somewhat clear my dazed thoughts.

  “Your pardon …” I forced myself into a sitting position. “But I believed… you were dead…”

  “If be dead, every time thought dead, be springing from grave every few minutes, like some fookin’ jack-poppet.” Spivvem loosely coiled the rope in his hands, then tossed it behind himself. “Would hugely interfere with business doings.”

  No longer in the shadow cast by this immense bulk, but rather on its uppermost surface, I was able to acquire a better perspective of my surroundings. Night had largely passed, with the cold pearl light of dawn breaking from somewhere to the east, the horizon below the clouded expanse in which we travelled. About me was what appeared to be an elabourate graveyard, similar to that of the cemetery in Highgate, from which I had been so recently abstracted, first from above and then beneath it. Impressive funereal statuary, of the weeping marble angel variety, extended toward the centre of this elevated space, and beyond.

  “‘Course, not everyone so fortunate.” Spivvem continued talking. “Poor bastard here, for example – friend of yours, take it.”

  I glanced back toward him, and saw that the toe of his boot was prodding a lifeless form stretched out on the ground. The glistening dark garb, with a slack rope still knotted about the bloodied chest, and the fire-scarred face turned upward, were all that was needed to confirm the dead man’s identity.

  “Not friend, quite…” I gave a slow nod. “But someone of my acquaintance, indeed.”

  “Would think you’d better opinion of him,” said Spivvem. “As having saved your life, and all.”

  “Perhaps so – but he did not do that out of warm-hearted charity. He pursued his own agenda, as always.”

  “Too right, did.” Spivvem gazed down at Scape’s stilled face. “Know bit of him, myself. Clever sort; would’ve accomplished great deal in criminal line, if hadn’t turned lofty-minded in latter days.”

  “He didn’t speak so highly of you.”

  “Imagine he didn’t; few do.” Spivvem turned his lopsided smile in my direction. “Generally, ‘cause step ahead of ‘em. Does lead to resentments.”

  “You flatter yourself.” Oddly, I felt the urge to defend the deceased. “He was aware that you had stealthily managed to insert yourself into that artificial Venice concocted by Blightley and Haze.”

  “Might well have. But ‘spect didn’t know that I’d secured position on this bluidy floating burial-ground. What he’d arranged to secure your rescue from killers on trail, only sufficed to deliver to my hands.”

  “Into your hands alone? Or are there others here, employed in combination with you?”

  “One time, great many hereabouts, labouring away – operation size of this requires deal of work, keep it going.” Spivvem’s smile continued as he raised a mischievous eyebrow. “Know where are, do you?”

  “I have a general surmise.” In the grey light, I pointed to the various memorial statues and monuments that were increasingly made visible. “When I was attending my late wife’s funeral in London’s Highgate, the graveside service was interrupted by – among a great many other unfortunate things – the appearance of just such a vast shape in the sky as I witnessed a little while ago, when I was stranded upon an artificial Hebridean island. Only at that previous time, the aerial prodigy resulted in the drawing up of my wife’s casket to it. That dire marvel would have been completely incomprehensible, had not an agent of the Gravitas Maximus Funerary Society elucidated how there had come to be a cemetery floating above Britain, its position in the sky secured by the levitating gasses generated by the decomposition of the corpses so unfortunate to have been deposited there.”

  “Rattle on, don’t you? Know all that, I do.”

  “The chances of two such airborne cemeteries being slight–” I persisted with my exposition. “I am forced to conclude that circumstances have brought me to that loathsome place as well.”

  “Right you are, Mr Dower. But if ‘specting more company than me, sadly disappointed. Profitability this enterprise greatly overestimated by gentleman you spoke to, though sure he knew also by then. Daft idea, ask me – people might pay have loved ones planted in sky, but that old saw – Out of sight, out of mind – applies, and most didn’t care to be inconvenienced by all took to come visiting ‘em, and lay posies on the headstones. Being why that ‘merican Blightley fellow and partner – queer little bugger Haze – took up notion of having deceased natter away, with clockwork boxes stuck inside.”

  “That was Blightley’s idea?”

  “Man’s head stuffed with useless fancies. Can believe it? – thought folks would be entranced by dead relations reciting tedious biographies, and pay to hear such. Or at least, managed convince your Whack-a-mus Fyoon-ree lot that was great idea. Hired actors and all, to read words. Bluidy idiots – who doesn’t know that whole reason dead are so fondly remembered, is that they finally have shut up?”

  “I am not certain it is the case for all people. There is at least one who has passed on, that I would give a great deal to have another moment between us.”

  “Suit yourself.” Spivvem gave a shrug of his narrow shoulders. “Any rate, Blightley bankrupted his backers, as has habit of doing. Ones who pulled your wife up like she were a conker on string – they were about last of workers, and easily chased off by myself, so have free hand to do as see fit–”

  His concluding exposition almost went unheard by me, for at the same moment a ponderous groaning noise battered the air, deeper and louder than anything that could have been produced by human throats, however massed in chorus they might have been. As it sounded, the ground beneath me shuddered, severely enough to dislodge a few broken bits of marble from the nearest ranks of headstones.

  “What, pray, was that?”

  Spivvem made no reply to me; that he had been taken by surprise as well was evidenced by the disappearance of his knowing smile, and the creases in his brow as he swung his gaze across the eerie landscape.

  “Don’t be worried,” he said after his scrutiny had ended, with no apparent result of having determined the cause of what we both had heard. “Machinery always making suchlike bother. ‘Spect no more than gears needs greasing.”

  “Seemed rather more ominous than what you suggest–”

  “Said, don’t fret.” His manner turn
ed snappish. “Everything be fine, sure enough. You’re one with all the questions; ask away, as want to.”

  “Very well–”

  Another unnerving phenomenon commenced, which delayed the formulation of my query. The air, thinned by our being at such an altitude, had previously been stirred by a constant breeze, strong enough to ruffle the air atop my head; I had assumed this to be a consequence of our passage through the sky, the velocity of which had been sufficient to extract both myself and the late Scape from that false isle where we had been surrounded by the More Loving Embrace’s agents. Now that same wind noticeably increased its force, to the degree of fluttering the lapels of my jacket; the sensation evoked was very like what one might have experienced, if standing at the edge of a Cornish cliffside, gazing across the ocean at the black clouds of an approaching storm.

  “Tell me this, then–” I shouted across the stiffening gale. “Where exactly are we now? I mean, other than upon the aerial cemetery. When I had seen before the underside of this construction, it had been where I had stood in Highgate, outside London. But I was informed that a system of cables, their anchors buried deep in the soil, was capable of adjusting its position to virtually anywhere above the British landscape; if that is truly the case, to what latitude has it been drawn?”

  “East what remains of Lake District,” said Spivvem, raising his voice to be heard. “That having been where you’d been stranded, after gondola had shot you away. And well south of Glasgow, heading ‘cross Scottish border.”

  Hearing that bleak city’s name unnerved me a bit, having so recently heard it spoken of by Scape, when he had recounted to me the sad early days of that previously unknown child born to me by Miss McThane.

  “Why there?”

  “Why anywhere?” Spivvem shrugged. “Truth be, though, Blightley and partner did better with Scots than else, with this bluidy graveyard in sky. ‘Spect something to do with national character, so to speak – overly pious, prone to daft religious enthusiasms. Morbid lot, too; wonder weren’t already conversing with dead, before this marvel appeared above ‘em. Whatever reason, consequence be great deal more these yammering corpses doing so with Scottish accents – why had such an arsenal ready when came time to rescue you.”

  My gaze followed the direction in which he pointed, and discerned a number of shroud-wrapped corpses, stacked up in the manner of cordwood; the mound was close enough to the aerial graveyard’s edge that they could easily be launched overboard, producing the macabre bombardment through which Scape and I had fled.

  “Your clever mind appalls me.” Though in truth, I supposed the man was no more reprehensible in his employment of the dead for his own purposes, than those who had given them voice, and placed them here at his disposal. “But I am well satisfied to leave these northern climes behind us – not much good has ever happened to me there, and my recent experiences have done little to alter my opinion in that regard. I am concerned, however, as to where we are headed, and whether it is some destination that will be even worse.”

  “Calm self, Dower; going no place haven’t been before–”

  The satisfaction of my curiosity was delayed yet again, by the same audible phenomenon as before, only louder and with more upheaving impact. The groaning and grinding noises, seemingly permeating every atom of the aerial cemetery, were deafeningly magnified from before. At the same moment, its constructed ground buckled beneath us, with enough whiplash force as to have nearly toppled Spivvem from his feet, had he not been able to grasp hold of the outstretched marble arm of one of the funereal angels planted nearby. A good minute or so passed before the shuddering effect, coupled with those dismaying sounds, diminished enough that my companion was able to continue his speaking.

  “As was saying…” Spivvem attempted to resume his previous cavalier nonchalance, but it was obvious that these untoward interruptions had left him rattled to a degree, though not as much as myself. “I’ve canny hand with machines, ones that draw up or spool out the cables tethered to earth–” He gestured toward some distant point beyond the towering stone monuments and closely ranked tombs. “Required no great effort on my part, set ‘em to bring us to our destination – and at good speed, too.”

  “I would caution you as to overconfidence regarding such devices.” I managed to get to my own feet, though the ground was still trembling beneath us. “They can be fearsomely mismanaged – trust me, I have much more experience with them than you do. The slightest error in their adjustment can result in terrible consequences.”

  “Fret yourself needlessly, you do.” Spivvem scoffed at this anxiety. “Dimensions this beast beyond your imagining – take fair bit shaking to wreck, it would. Soon enough, see London – be sailing over Saint Paul’s, before any great damage happens.”

  “Are you insane?” The other’s words aroused more alarm than had the deep-pitched noise – which still continued, albeit at a slightly lower volume – and the trembling of the aerial cemetery’s bulk beneath us. “You have us heading to London?”

  “What said. Have problem with that?”

  “Of course I do!” I shouted over the noises, as well as the wind which coursed at accelerating velocity past us; I braced myself to keep from being toppled by its force. “I escaped from London – I have no desire to return there. Surely all the conspiracies that seek to do me ill, if not outright devise my murder, are headquartered there. I would not have to await their dispatching more assassins; you would place me virtually in their hands, so they could slaughter at their leisure!”

  “Matter of degree, Dower; that’s all – folk who’ve your hide in mind, track down wherever bunkered. If you’d foil ‘em, best strike at their heart; only chance you’ve got.”

  “I assure you, I am not the striking kind.” The voicing of my anxiety was counterpointed by further sounds, distressingly close, that seemed like the wrenching apart of iron girders. “There is a capacity for violence which you seem to possess, that I do not – confront these assailants with whatever efforts you wish; I would only be in your way. Whatever survival I have managed in this world, it has been through hiding, and staying hid as best I am able.”

  “Too late for that,” said Spivvem, any smile erased by a grimmer enthusiasm. “You and I, we’ve business in that city.”

  “Business? What can you possibly mean by–”

  Any further description of the fate awaiting me was obviated by what next ensued. The previous shaking of the cemetery’s mass was as nothing compared to the shock that bolted through it now; rather than being knocked from my standing position, I was rendered airborne myself, tossed a distance of at least several yards, and landing so close to the edge that I had to hurriedly scramble away from it, fingers clawing into the ground, to keep from falling. Glancing over my shoulder, I beheld a vertiginous sight – the surrounding clouds had parted enough to reveal the earth far below; we were at such an elevation that whole districts of the British landscape were visible, with silvery rivers winding past the hills and fields. If I had been sent over this virtual precipice, I would have had a considerable expanse of time to review my ill-spent life, before I was buried deep by the final impact.

  Flattening myself chest-first, with hope of preventing any subsequent loss of balance, I could not keep myself from raising my head and twisting it about, to further regard that dreadful vista. The cemetery, or at least that section of it in which I was trapped, had tilted edge-downward, providing an ability to perceive the cables which had before been obscured underneath. As had been described to me, they stretched taut between their earthbound anchors and the enormous spooling reels of the cemetery’s clattering machinery, which I had not been able to see until now.

  But something had gone amiss with those – as I watched aghast, an explosion tore open the riveted boilers, their iron walls splitting open as readily as one might crack a hen’s egg. A billowing gout of steam erupted, large enough to eclipse every aspect of the machinery behind. But only for a moment – the velocity of t
he cemetery’s passage through the air quickly dispersed the churning vapour, revealing the tangled wreckage of gears the size of houses, now split in half, their teeth snarling into the other mechanical components. Even more dismaying, though, was that a number of the cables, each thick in diameter as a bullock, snapped free of the reels upon which they had been wound; the iron lines slackened, furiously whipping about as they fell toward the landscape below.

  The cemetery’s horizontal speed had already been dangerously accelerated, even though its bulk had still been tethered to the anchoring points over which it had travelled. Now freed of that restraint, the erratic but still functioning machinery that drew up the cables ahead, motivating the cemetery on its course, whirred and clattered at an even faster rate; with a jolting lurch that ran through the entire construction, it leapt dizzyingly forward.

  As the surface beneath me tilted at an even more precipitous angle, I gained my feet, attempting to hurl myself toward whatever marble statue might provide sufficient hold to prevent my being dislodged and thrown over to my death. This I managed, grasping an angel’s stiffly spread wing, then hooking an arm about its neck. If I had not, I would have been knocked askew by a shrouded avalanche, the remainder of the corpses that Spivvem had stocked in place for use as missiles upon the heads of the More Loving Embrace’s agents, now toppling across the edge and out into the open air.